Twitter peer dies after libel torment

Friends blame the death of Thatcher’s fixer Lord McAlpine on the battle to clear his name over false child abuse claims

Lord McAlpine in Venice. He spent his final years living in Italy (Peter Nicholls)

LORD McALPINE, the Tory grandee who was wrongly implicated in a child abuse scandal, has died at his home in Italy aged 71. Friends claimed last night that fighting the false allegations had taken a “huge toll” on his health.

The BBC paid £185,000 in damages to McAlpine after a Newsnight programme in November 2012 broadcast allegations that an unnamed “leading Conservative politician from the Thatcher years” had abused boys from the Bryn Estyn children’s home in Wrexham, Clwyd, in the 1970s and 1980s.

McAlpine’s name was subsequently linked to the allegations on Twitter.

In the ensuing furore George Entwistle, the BBC’s director-general of 55 days, resigned and McAlpine sued Sally Bercow, the wife of Commons Speaker John, the comedian Alan Davies and George Monbiot, the left-wing commentator, for tweets speculating that he was the politician involved.

“There’s a lot of correspondence that shows how this whole thing put him